Monster by Jowita Bydlowska
A Review by Emily Weedon
Fitting that following a day of facing off against monsters in my own life, monsters who unhoused me, and upheaved my whole life when I lost my home, my peace of mind, and let's be real, my faith in humanity, that I should get back to my work, and discuss the monster and threat of being unhoused that make up the meat of Jowita Bydlowska's work.
“This is a deeply female book, and one which ties together motherhood, sexuality and home in a primordial way.”
A woman in the throes of a dying relationship faces the imminent loss of her home, her place of safety, her refuge, and both she and the titular inner monster make moves to fight that reality. I wrote elsewhere about the dark, slithy toves of subterranean femininity in Monster. This is a deeply female book, and one which ties together motherhood, sexuality and home in a primordial way. A home has always been something greater than bricks and mortar to me, to paraphrase old Morrissey... I've personally lost many homes. Fire. Relationship collapse. (Parental and my own.) Doug Ford. Landlords wanting to cash in. Roommates who attack during sleep. No two unhousings are quite alike, though there is a piquancy to the loss of a home that comes hard on the heels of loss of love, and never worse than when one is also a newly minted single mother. This is the stuff Beowulf is made of: wrathful mothers whose nests or young are threatened. I've been a wrathful mother whose nest was threatened. It wasn't just about the fear of becoming homeless. It was about being crushed by the dispassionate juggernaut of evolution. It was being Darwin-ed out of existence.
The author of Possessed, Guy and Drunk Mom, Bydlowska's own story is one of coming from another country and desperately desiring the safety, the roots, the meaning of a real, lasting, permanent home. Sometimes home is another person, not just a structure. I myself have struggled for most of my life with a desperate, deeply rooted need to have a safe harbour. This is likely a reflection of having a rejecting mother and indifferent parenting. Home for me was always an impossibility. I loved home unrequitedly. I fought for my nest, with the blind animal wrath of a badger. Reading Jowita's beautifully constructed Monster, I was thrust into the heart and heat of this existential struggle... I loved the moment when the main character speaks spells to her home, in a heart wrenching bid to save it. The moment conjured images of witchcraft and sorcery, and of ancient practices like the mezuzah adorning the doorway of a home to protect it. At points in history, we honoured our "household gods" at shrines we kept at home. Home to a mother is the extension of her womb - it is where she carries on the primeval work of nurturing and protecting her young. The idea of houses involving rent, mortgage, rules, law, become absurd when weighed against the mysteries of life.
I love that Monster gets into female rage. The rage turned inside, compounding violence ravaging a woman who starves herself, and which is silent, secret, internal, unspoken. This internal monster channels what I have often felt, what I think many women have often felt. External rage as a woman is not 'on'. It's not permissible in a world where assertiveness is still "bitchy". We're supposed to accept the hurts and travails of life with the faint smile of an iconic saint. Despite living with tides of life itself within us.
“Consummate writer that Bydlowska is, Monster is packed with saw-toothed, dark humour, both observational in passing description and in the absurdist, heightened reality of its world.”
Wading around in the scary subconscious of female rage, home and motherhood might make a reader fear, on different levels. Consummate writer that Bydlowska is, Monster is packed with saw-toothed, dark humour, both observational in passing description and in the absurdist, heightened reality of its world.
Plenty has been said on the subject of autofiction about this book and about others. I frankly never pick up a novel on the basis of it's purport to tell the truth - most writing, including non-fiction employs and relies on fabrication at some level. I'm more interested in the book and I finding each other where we are. And then, I'm interested in whether or not a book can form architecture that holds me, guides me ably through a narrative, leaves me changed somehow and lingers in my mind after. Monster does all this.
I loved that Monster got downright messy and dives lustfully into the fleshy details of a passionate love, even as it skewers the wilting of an old love. This is not the Can con I grew up with. Dark, intense, scary, challenging. Bydlowska has created a modern day fairy tale that remembers the gore of the Brothers Grimm, but she creates her own iconography, her own cadence to do so.
About the Author
Jowita Bydlowska is the author of Possessed, the best-selling memoir Drunk Mom, and the best-selling novel GUY. She's also a prolific short-story writer, journalist and a professor at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University. She was born in Warsaw, Poland and came to Canada as a teenager. She lives in Toronto with her son and their chihuahua.
Book Details
Publisher : Anvil Press (Sept. 1 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 1772142247
ISBN-13 : 978-1772142242